A wireless device waking from a power save mode may poll the network controller to see if the network controller has buffered unicast frames that are addressed solely for that wireless device. However, broadcast and multicast frames are not buffered until requested, but are transmitted immediately after DTIM beacons. Under current standards, if the wireless device is part of a multicast group it must wake up at every DTIM interval to receive any broadcast/multicast frames for its group. DTIM beacons are typically transmitted every 200-400 msec, requiring a wireless device in the power save mode to wake up every 200-400 msec to learn if it has any broadcast or multicast frames to receive. For wireless devices that communicate frequently, this may be a reasonable tradeoff between saving battery power and obtaining all such frames. But for battery-powered sensor devices that need to only wake up occasionally (e.g., tens of minutes to hours) to communicate sensor data, waking up multiple times per second can severely reduce battery life and thereby increase maintenance costs (e.g., replacing/recharging the battery frequently) or reduce product life (e.g., for disposable sensors when replacing/recharging the battery is not feasible).